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Black Lives Matter Continues to Parody Itself in Public

July 27, 2016

Less than a week after a racist, black supremacist murdered five police officers in the worst mass-shooting of law enforcement in American history, a co-founder of Toronto’s Black Lives Matter movement came out and blamed the horrific massacre on – I kid you not – white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism. She added that attacks on police officers are to be expected, given that “people are just tired of dying by their hands.”

The group co-founder, Janaya Khan, describes herself as a black, queer, gender-nonconforming activist, social-justice educator and “staunch Afrofuturist.” Professional-victim has a lot of fancy nomenclature. In a recent Facebook post, Khan wrote:

They will blame Black Lives Matter. They will blame Black people. Not matter the identity. They will blame us like they blame Muslims for Nice. Though the man had no connection to Islam. He was Brown. That was enough. We know the burden of one person representing us all and praying that they look like something other than us even though colonialism imperialism white supremacy capitalism is the killer. They will say there is a war against the police even though people are just tired of dying by their hands.

Khan sets up a straw man – or rather, straw person-of-nonconforming gender. No one is directly blaming Black Lives Matter for the police massacre. Likewise, no one is blaming “black people.” That’s an absurd statement in itself. What is being suggested, is that propagating a storybook scenario in which police officers are a tribe of racist mass murders, has fueled hostility against police officers.

Khan concludes, writing, “They will say there is a war against the police even though people are just tired of dying by their hands.”

Astonishingly, this quote has gotten virtually no media coverage (the Toronto Star and CBC must be busy looking into Justin Trudeau’s new favorite brand of hair product or something). The Black Lives Matter co-founder dismisses the deliberate targeting and execution of police officers, suggesting that people are tired of dying by their hands.

This is nonsense for two reasons.

First: cases of officers resorting to lethal force are individual, unrelated cases. Why is Khan tying the mass shooting of five police officers in Dallas, to cherry-picked instances of cops using lethal force against arrested black men? Unless of course the Black Lives Matter co-founder is suggesting all police officers are conspiratorially coordinating across the nation to randomly kill innocent black people.

Second: far more black men are killed by other black men than by police officers. As reported by theNew York Post, “for every black man — criminal or innocent — killed by a cop, 40 black men were murdered by other black men.”

This isn’t the first time that a co-founder of Toronto’s Black Lives Matter movement has publicly made a complete fool of themselves. Back in April, co-founder Yusra Khogali made headlines after tweeting “plz Allah give me strength to not kill white folks.” She also likened Canada’s government to the Ku Klux Klan.

Black Lives Matter may have some legitimate grievances. Opposed to pointing out specific cases of legitimate police wrongdoing – with evidence – and working to improve, not demonize, law enforcement; the organization continues to hilariously parody itself in the public eye. More salient however, is its broad, mendacious framing of police officers, which will undoubtedly lead to more attacks on police officers.